Ulysses and the Sirens

This painting captures the exact moment from Homer's Odyssey when Ulysses sails past the Sirens, the sea creatures whose singing lured sailors to their deaths. Draper painted it around 1909, and he made one bold choice that sets his version apart. Rather than showing the Sirens perched safely on distant rocks, he has them climbing right up onto the ship, dripping wet and desperate to reach the crew. You can see Ulysses tied to the mast, straining against his ropes exactly as the legend describes, because he wanted to hear the beautiful song without steering his ship to ruin.

Herbert James Draper was a British painter working in the late Victorian and Edwardian era, and he loved subjects drawn from Greek myth. He gives the three Sirens human bodies here, with only faint hints of fish tails on the ones still in the water, a detail that makes them feel more like real temptations than fantasy monsters. The dark ship and churning grey sea keep the scene tense, while the oarsmen row hard with their ears blocked by wax so the song cannot touch them. It is a dramatic, slightly theatrical picture, the kind of storytelling that appealed to audiences of its day who knew their classical tales well.